Colin Skelton

Spiritual Circles: Ritual and the Performance of Identities in the Zionist Christian Church Colin Skelton

The purpose of this book was to examine how spiritual identities are constructed through ritualised behaviour and enacted belief in Zionist Christian Church services. Another aim was to identify the significance of specific religious objects and activities in order to investigate how these contribute to the performance of identity in the Zionists. The investigation was rooted in various ritual performance theories (Turner, 1982; Schechner, 2002). The investigation revealed that Zionist identity is performed on both the individual and collective levels of Zionist culture. The results indicated that identity is constructed through a series of religious acts and symbolic behaviours and that identity formation occurs through performance. It was also discovered that Zionist church services are highly ritualised and that spiritual identities emerge through ?restored? behaviours prescribed in the ritual context. The belief in the ?Holy Spirit? was also discovered to play a significant role in the emergence of spiritual identities.